One of four Republicans who comprise the Florida Cabinet, Putnam, 40, of Bartow, is a former five-term congressman who rose to the third-highest leadership position in the U.S. House. But after House Republicans faced devastating losses in the 2008 election, Putnam, unlike Speaker John Boehner, resigned his leadership position. And in 2010, he was elected Florida's agriculture commissioner. He is considered a shoo-in for re-election this year.

Putnam visited the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board recently to talk about the legislative session, and anything we wanted to bring up. We thought you'd like a peek at that conversation, greatly edited here for length. You can also find video snippets at sunsentinel.com/adamputnam.

You've made water a signature issue. Tell us what we should know.

The Legislature did an awful lot on water, but our issues focused on the northern Everglades. Basically, Lake Okeechobee is the big beating heart of everything farther south. And if you can prevent large volumes of water from going into the lake, then you can avoid, or at least delay, the types of releases they had to make last summer, which resulted in a lot of environmental impact in the Caloosahatchee on the Gulf side and the St. Lucie on the East Coast.

We came in with a very aggressive agenda, asking for $10 million for the northern Everglades, which the Legislature funded, and $5 million for springs. With all due respect to South Florida, the entire state is now in some form of conflict over water and the issues aren't all exactly the same. The issues in Jacksonville around the St. John's are different than the issues in Apalachicola in the oyster industry and inadequate flows from Georgia.

But viewing water issues as a statewide initiative is something I began trying to lay out for the Legislature early on — that we have had a disproportionate amount of scarce resources going to the Everglades to the detriment of other worthy water resource endeavors. So we began to see that pendulum swing back a little bit this year. That will continue.

Did you just say funding for the Everglades has been disproportionate and the pendulum needs to swing farther north?

Yes, but my choice of the pendulum analogy was probably a poor one because it won't be a zero sum game. You'll see a larger commitment to water. So, it won't be a dollar less going to the Everglades that's now going to springs. You're seeing a ramping up of funding for all water projects.

Ultimately, the biggest piece of the puzzle is getting the [Army] Corps of Engineers to finish the work on the lake. Because until we can hold the right volume of water in that lake without fear of a breach of the dike, we're not ever going to be able to accomplish everything we hope to accomplish south of the lake.

Having served in Congress and seeing all this, as long as Lake Okeechobee is on the Top Ten list of the worst dikes in America, it will be funded. The day that it becomes the 11th worst dike in America, the funding is going to dry up.

What explains the Corps' delay?

It is such an expensive project and it consumes a large portion of the Corps' national budget. The Corps would not take the position they are shortchanging Florida. They would say X percentage of all of our money is going to Lake Okeechobee when we've got issues up and down the Mississippi, and we've got dredging projects in ports all around the country, and we've got issues in Alaska and Seattle. They would take the position that they are being more than generous to Florida. But it is such a huge dike, I mean, the circumference of Lake Okeechobee.

Do you support FPL building two more nuclear reactors in South Florida?

FPL right now is over 60 percent dependent on natural gas and the trend is for that number to only go higher. So if you're going to have a diverse energy portfolio, nuclear is a part of that.

FPL also has an aggressive renewable component. They have solar fields in Florida and their parent company is the largest wind producer in the United States. Nuclear is clean. It doesn't produce carbon dioxide. The engineering is sound. The Turkey Point plant where they are going to add the two new reactors has been going for a long time and has a great track record. It certainly survived Hurricane Andrew very well. I think it's an important part of diversifying our energy portfolio.

Do you believe climate change is real and that man plays a role in it?

I think we are clearly witnessing changes in climate. When you watch the National Geographic channel, and they show the footprint of the Antarctic ice sheets and the plants growing at higher altitudes, you know we're clearly seeing some adaptiveness in nature that reflects some change.